HOW TO HAVE A REWARDING INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP
Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D. 1-25
There is a myriad of guides to having good relationships available in media, but why not one more? I have been interested my whole life in deep, intimate, and rewarding relationships, and they have been the best thing in my life. At age 81, I believe that I have some knowledge of the subject (from experience and from my professional psychology career). Almost anyone can date and perhaps hook up, and almost anyone can get married, but the resulting relationship is not necessarily good. All “good” relationships take nourishing on a daily basis, through your actions but also through who you are (which goes far beyond just following a road map of things to do). If you follow the guidance here seriously, you may well become the kind of person that naturally nourishes your relationships, regardless of where you are in this regard right now. I hope that this guidance will be useful for you in learning how to relate better, and it may be useful also for more experienced relaters in reviewing how they are doing. I wish you well in relating!
Learning and acquiring the social skills needed to have a rewarding intimate relationship takes time. Children are lucky if they see their parents doing well at relationships, but most of us are still learning through our 30’s and 40’s—the times when we actually need already to have that knowledge and those skills! All we can do is acknowledge where we are and keep on learning (and enjoy the results as we become better at it). My own route to being better at relating took a long time. I think that I was pretty good at it by age 50, but I did not reach out very well for learning experiences, so you may well do better!
Of course, you may have an acceptable relationship in which you bicker and guard what you reveal of your real feelings to your partner, and it that is fine for you, then it’s fine. I am trying here to describe a kind of relationship in which you feel completely safe and comfortable, you feel quite able to reveal your whole self to the partner, and you have absolute confidence that he/she loves you greatly. If that is what you want, then please do try this at home!
There are elements of relating that are important in all productive relationships, such as—
- having a positive attitude toward others
- approaching others in a friendly way
- being happy around others
- treating others with respect and courtesy
- refraining from taking advantage of others
- refraining from trying to force others to do what we want
- being understanding with others and understanding others accurately, using accurate empathy
- attending to others’ emotional needs
- giving others basic acceptance
- treating others compassionately
- being honest with others
- being responsible
- seeing others as basic equals and treating them fairly
- sharing and taking turns with others
- being generous with others
- bringing appropriate humor to our interactions with others
- communicating effectively with others
- cooperating effectively with others
- controlling one’s behavior so as not to harm others
- managing one’s emotions so as not to harm others
If you are able to do these things fully right now, then you don’t need to read any further!
If you want more rewarding and more intimate relationships, the more of the following each partner has within himself/herself and the more of the following that is present in your relationship, the deeper the closeness and intimacy that can be achieved and maintained:
- similarity in values
- self-awareness
- interest in others’ feelings and lives
- capacity to love and to feel good about the partner’s successes and good fortune
- viewing others in a compassionate way
- capacity to accept others, even with their differences
- willingness to tolerate and help with your partner’s emotions (but with limits)
- self-confidence in your ability to stand alone, without the partner
- appreciation for the magic in the spirit of the partner
- joy in the perception that the partner is truly a great person (in the sense of having integrity, empathy, genuine concern for others, and capacity to love)
- pleasure in giving pleasure to the partner
- sexual pleasure (for those relationships in which sex is mutually desired)
Both partners must be able to do these things at least to a moderate degree to have the most intimate relationship possible. When it is a male-female relationship, some of these may be more of a challenge for the males if they are expecting a more traditional relationship. The problem is that the traditional marital relationship is not set up to be emotionally intimate, since it is more oriented toward the splitting of responsibilities by gender and carrying out the duties important for the raising of children.
(In this guide to relationships, please take “him/her,” etc. as including all possible personal pronouns. There is no intent here to downplay the equal value of all persons who do not happen to like either “him” or “her” for themselves.)
1. All rewarding intimate relationships are based on and suffused with affectional love—both friendships and committed pair-bonding. Because this basis for closer relating is so important, it will be discussed at length here, before we address other aspects of relating.
For our purposes love will be defined as a positive, warm, affectionate feeling. When we love someone, we feel warmly toward him or her, and feel affection (tender attachment and fondness) toward him or her, and it feels good. Similarly, when we love ourselves, we feel warmly and affectionate toward ourselves. (Love is not painful or negative.) In our society “love” is usually assumed to include passion or desire, but marvelous love and intimacy are possible without sex. Good sex can add considerably to the value of a relationship to you, and it can make us feel triumphant and all-powerful. However, even though it feels like it is true intimacy, it is not enough by itself to create or sustain a long-term, rewarding intimate relationship. There is much more to intimacy than sex.
Loving someone includes thinking of things through the day that you can do that will please or add to the loved one’s life and happiness. It means giving of yourself to the loved one. It is ideal to be able to talk to each other about your thoughts and feelings on all matters (and take pleasure in doing so). In a truly loving relationship, each gains equally from the relationship, and the fate of each person is intertwined with that of the other. Love is not just desire or sex, and love is fatally damaged by wishes to control or dominate. Love is limited by competition.
When we love, we want to attach to the loved one and to be connected. When we love, we want to be like the loved one or identified with the loved one, since it feels good to be connected in this way, and since it feels good to think of ourselves as similar to the loved one. In loving, we want to be close to the loved one. Being near feels good and is comforting. When we love someone, we want good things for him or her. We want the person to be happy and fortunate in life, and we want things to go well for him or her. We feel pain empathically when a loved person is hurt. We take great pleasure in our contact with the loved one, and we often enjoy simply looking at or thinking about the loved person, even when not interacting. The loved person is a positive object for us whom we value as a source of good feelings and pleasant experiences.
How do we make this rewarding and encompassing love possible? We are self-centered creatures, and we relate because of what we get or hope to get from a relationship. This does not, however, mean that any relationship must be either manipulative or insincere. The trick is to make the other person’s feelings, needs, and welfare as important as your own, so that you both benefit from how you relate.
For rewarding intimate relationships, it is just as important to love yourself well as it is to love your partner. That way you can take care of your own emotions and issues rather than overly relying on your partner for support. Loving yourself is not conceit or selfishness but rather having the same compassionate and loving attitude toward yourself that you (hopefully) have toward others about whom you care. This means caring about your feelings and welfare and wanting the best for yourself. As we discuss loving your partner well, ask yourself if you love yourself well, too. Your own love can be the best love there is. Others can leave you, but no one can take your love for yourself away from you.
Love your partner for who he/she actually is, not just for the parts that benefit you. We all crave that kind of acceptance, as it allows us to joyfully be fully who we are.
Affectionate love is inherently giving rather than self-centered. Love is not self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice is not automatically love.
Love your partner as imperfect, just as you love yourself even though you are imperfect. We are all flawed beings. You are lovable, just the way you are.
Show your love in your attitudes, and do one nice thing for your partner every day.
True love is definitely not having everything you do accepted by your partner and being able to do anything you want in your relationship. True love requires that you give as much as you get.
Don’t expect your partner to please you all the time, just as you don’t need to please him/her all the time. You are both complex beings, and in a relationship between two human beings, there will always be some things in one that don’t please the other. Don’t press your partner to be what you want him/her to be. Just let him/her be.
The greatest barriers to loving and being loved are the fear that one is not lovable and the fear that no one can be trusted completely, which lead to the unwillingness to trust anyone’s love for one. Both cause us not to open up to loving and being loved and therefore to keep love relationships at a relatively shallow level (against which we usually eventually rail as if we have been cheated).
2. People with deep intimacy often feel like soul mates, a condition that involves not just similarity but seeing and accepting all regarding the partner. As Thomas Merton says in his book Soul Mates, “People are infinitely deep and complicated.” This kind of intimacy, then, needs patience for getting to know the partner in depth, taking a larger view of the partner or friend and the relationship, and allowing time for you to “digest” what you learn (letting it percolate within you and waiting to become aware of your less conscious reactions and associations). It means recognizing that a person cannot be completely and exactly defined, since we are all changing all the time. It means being willing to know the partner in reality, foregoing idealization and illusions and seeing (and ultimately accepting) the not-so-nice aspects of the person. It means understanding that people are complex (e.g., one can both want to be closer and also feel like pulling back), and one can both crave closeness and need alone-time to attend to oneself and stay separate and sane.
3. Be selective about with whom there may be a possibility of a deeper, more rewarding relationship. There are some people whom you can like and/or love, and there are some you cannot. In general, the more you both like doing the same things and the more similar your values are regarding how everyone should be treated, the more likely it is that you can have a close and rewarding relationship.
4. How people are attracted to each other is pretty much a mystery to science. To some extent, similarities attract, and differences repel, but depending on the issue, the opposite may be true (e.g., your reaction to your mother’s appearance combined with the strength of your repulsion in regard to the incest taboo could turn out to be either positive or negative).
What attracts people strongly seems a bit like magic, as it proceeds for the most part from what is unconscious in us, and “keeping a relationship alive” has a lot to do with continuing to resonate with that magic. This may be sustained by continuing to be open to learning more and more about ourselves and our partners, including perceiving more about what is unconscious in ourselves and our partners. There is so much that is unconscious in us that this process can go on for a lifetime. The more you learn and accept about yourself, the more “you” you will be, and this being intimate with yourself will help you to be closer to your partner. The more routine a relationship is and the more predictable and expectable a partner becomes, the less magic there will be.
Sexual attraction is not necessary for two people to have a rewarding intimate relationship, since there is much more to intimacy than sex, but sexual satisfaction with an intimate partner adds significantly to bonding and enjoyment of the partner in those relationships in which sex is appropriate and desired. (Friendship was the ultimate in intimate relationships in ancient Greek culture.) Sex can provide additional meaning for the relationship in terms of the joining or intermingling of the persons involved. This requires that a partner be open to what makes sex meaningful for the other person (and the things that make sex meaningful for oneself, of course). We understand this from a person’s sexual fantasies and concrete desires for specific ways of being sexual.
5. Most importantly in a relationship, care about the other person. We are in relationships to benefit from them (less so in parent-child relationships than in intimate ones), so part of being in a rewarding intimate relationship is to help your partner get what he/she needs and wants. Find ways to contribute to your partner’s well-being, welfare, and happiness. Pay attention to what will make him/her feel good and to what will be best for him/her. Add meaning, satisfaction, and fulfillment to his/her life, in addition to pleasure, if you can. Be nice to your partner; think actively of nice things to do for him/her; be kind to him/her; be sympathetic; feel for him/her; be gentle; don’t upset him/her; be forbearing and tolerant; accept errors, mistakes, and frailties as an inevitable part of being human; accept how he/she really is, with grace; be agreeable; and look for ways to minimize tension, conflict, and disagreement.
The more you demonstrate your caring about the other person, the better he/she will treat you, and the closer you will be. If you don’t care about the other person, you will have only an instrumental relationship (giving to get).
You demonstrate your caring every day, in everything you do that affects the other person. Before you make decisions that could affect him/her, pause to consider the impact on him/her of what you choose to do. Flowers and chocolates may be useful sometimes, but simply opening a door for someone or making sure that there is enough ice cream for two before you finish the carton can count for quite a bit. Sometimes caring is shown by what you don’t do, like not correcting his/her speech in front of others and not jumping in to tell the story better than he/she is telling it. Do your best to minimize your partner’s suffering in life.
Your caring is demonstrated by making your loving feelings clear to your partner, by saying “I love you,” in whatever form you like, preferably daily (none of this “love you, too” stuff in passing!). Of course, don’t say it if you don’t feel it at that moment.
6. It’s important to appreciate your partner. If you want a rewarding intimate relationship with someone, it’s certain that you already appreciate the person, probably for a number of things. Communicate your appreciation often.
7. Treat your partner in the relationship with respect and courtesy at all times. Consider his/her feelings and needs at all times, and always treat him/her well. Don’t blame him/her for your feelings unless he/she is directly responsible for hurting you. You cannot be nice in public and then use him/her to receive all your bad feelings in private. Don’t mistreat him/her to “get your anger out” if it was caused by someone else. Your feelings are your problem, so don’t act out. On the other hand, you may benefit from telling him/her about your feelings (about him/her or someone else) in order to get some sympathy, support, or advice.
In order to maintain a feeling of aliveness in the relationship, limit your unspoken assumptions. After years of being together, it is easy to stop saying please and “thank you” to each other, but these are indications of respect that each partner appreciates in his/her partner. Similarly, if a partner doesn’t pick up his/her clothes off the floor and the other does pick them up, the partner who doesn’t can easily assume that his/her partner will continue to pick them up forever with no thanks, but this can rankle. Acknowledge your shortcoming by saying “thank you” or “sorry.”
8. We all love feeling understood (if we trust that the other person won’t use that understanding against us!), but understanding your partner comprehensively and deeply in terms of his/her own needs, feelings, personalities, and imperfections takes effort. Use your empathy to understand your partner on a deep level. A deep understanding of someone leads naturally to having compassion for him/her.
9. To have a rewarding intimate relationship, you must feel comfortable with the partner. If you feel uncomfortable, especially alone together, it will greatly limit the ultimate value of the relationship to you. It may be possible to talk to your partner about what you are uncomfortable about and hope for change, but usually that involves so much change in who your partner really is that it doesn’t lead to a comfortable relationship for both of you.
10. Don’t enter a relationship thinking that you must or will change the other person so that it will be a good relationship for you. It almost never works well. It might preserve a quid pro quo relationship (where you are there for utilitarian rather than intimacy reasons), but it won’t make it good if what you want is a rewarding intimate relationship. Think how it would feel to you if your partner said, in essence, that he/she could love you and feel comfortable with you if only you would change X, Y, and Z about yourself.
11. To have a rewarding intimate relationship, you must feel safe with your partner. If you don’t feel safe, then you will always be on guard, and it will negatively affect how much you can risk in revealing yourself in the relationship. Again, if you don’t feel safe with a partner, this is unlikely to change. The issue of physical safety in a relationship is especially salient for women in regard to the greater physical strength and the greater likelihood of physically-expressed anger from men.
12. It is a real challenge for most of us to accept and ignore some the partner’s habits that are different from how we were raised—whether the partner washes the dishes right after a meal or waits until tomorrow, whether the partner flosses, whether the partner habitually almost runs out of gas before filling up, etc. If you don’t accept these behaviors, they will go on bothering you forever. It’s so easy to say to your partner “wouldn’t it be better/easier if you would…?”, and yet to do that is destructive to the relationship, because your partner will doubt your love for him/her and will always be in conflict about how much to trust you. From the viewpoint of the partner who is being corrected, it would take a great deal of maturity for him/her to accept your non-acceptance and still love you unreservedly, and most of us are not that mature! Are you?
To go one step further, what difference does it really make to you if he/she washes the dishes after each meal or the next day (assuming that they get clean either way)? Does it cost you anything? Does it really matter, or is it more just because you are used to doing it another way? If so, do you need to have him/her do it your way in order to love him/her? Really?!
13. To expand on the previous item, to have the deepest, most intimate, and most rewarding relationship, both partners must be themselves in the relationship and must be independent at the same time that they are deeply involved with each other. You must each be happy by yourselves, so that you can be confident enough to be fully yourselves with your partner.
14. Since we are all unique in our combinations of genetics and experience, we all see the world somewhat differently. In your rewarding intimate relationship, even if you each have satisfying lives separately, you still have to come up with joint decisions about some things (what to watch on TV, where to eat, how much to spend on things), and this will require compromise. You can’t just have things your way, and in fact if you do have things just your way, the relationship won’t be happy and intimate for long, since it will be grossly unequal. If we are to be willing to compromise readily and with the partner’s best interests at heart, we must expect that the compromising will be shared equally—that your partner will compromise in your favor in the future enough that you come out as equals in the relationship. It takes trust, confidence, and maturity to compromise without resentment!
15. In order for both partners to be relaxed and comfortable in the relationship, they must each accept the other partner pretty completely. This means seeing the other person comprehensively as who he/she really is and being OK with that. You don’t have to like everything about the partner, but you aren’t distracted or annoyed with those things that you don’t particularly like. This challenges us to be more objective and insightful with ourselves regarding why we don’t like certain things. Ask yourself if these things are really important, and if they are actually important to you (to your view of existence, morals, relationships), then you might want to wonder if you are trying to have more of a relationship with the other person than will actually be possible.
Acceptance is basically “letting be,” and in this instance, we let the other person be himself/herself fully, so that nothing must be hidden or avoided. Every hidden or avoided characteristic or behavior takes away from the joy of the relationship and the exuberance of feeling that you are completely accepted!
Almost every partner will have certain behaviors that you don’t like, but you can transcend the usual bickering about such things by reassessing the importance of the behavior (is it really important when the dishes are done?) and by figuring out exactly why you do things the way you do them (usually because that was “the way I was raised,” which leads to “so what if that is the way you were raised”).
When you have differences with your partner, pause and think about what you really want. Couples often fight over very concrete things, like whether the butter should be stored in the refrigerator or on the counter, when at least one of the partners is actually concerned about something else, like whether his/her partner loves him/her enough or is flexible enough to make the relationship work for the long haul. Or you fight about whether to stay at a party longer or go home, when the issue is really how much each partner cares (or doesn’t care) about the other’s feelings. It is scarier to deal with the real issue, but by avoiding it (and fighting about the concrete issues), you lose a chance to grow even closer.
If you love someone, you will actually want him/her to be happy and untroubled by you and your behavior, and you will therefore be willing to consider altering some of your behaviors for the sake of your partner. Loving someone in an adult, equal relationship does not include treating that person badly, and it does not imply that everything you do should be seen as OK. (For this as well as for other relationship skills, see the essays on my website www.livewiselydeeply.com and my book Live Wisely, Deeply, and Compassionately.)
16. If both partners are to have an intimate, safe, comfortable, rewarding relationship, they have to see each other as equals. The relationship will be quite limited if one partner looks down on the other or feels superior, whether that is from abilities, status, income, appearance, intelligence, or whatever. It won’t work if a man feels superior to a woman because men are inherently superior (or vice versa). It won’t work if one person controls the other, since then they certainly are not equal.
If you see yourself as superior, or you need to be superior, then your partner will know that you view him/her as an inferior, and this will limit your relationship to that between a superior and an inferior, with all of its fear, resentment, contempt, games, and deception. You cannot be superior without feeling “better than” your partner, which means that you look down on your partner.
Equality means that the welfare of each partner has equal value deserves and consideration. Financial transactions that are made do not benefit one partner more than another. Resources are shared equally. The preferences of each have equal weight. The needs of each for job-related education are seen as equal. Needs and preferences in sex are given equal value. Equality means having evenness and fairness in all matters—equal power to decide what show to watch and where to vacation, equal power to decide where your child goes to school, equal right to the financial resources of the relationship (your income and the partner’s income, etc.). If you have to have your own way, it will diminish the love and intimacy in the relationship.
To create and maintain equality obviously requires communication and negotiation skills and an ability to tolerate differences. In making a joint decision, each partner must feel free to express needs, feelings, and preferences, and the other partner must take them seriously. Once all relevant needs, feelings, and preferences are on the table, both partners can formulate and describe ways to compromise that would be beneficial and acceptable to both. It is more common for each partner simply to try to convince the other to do what he or she wants, but this implies putting your needs and desires above those of the other, so there will always be a winner and a loser, which breeds resentment and also brings into question the winner’s expressions of love. Love means placing a high value on the loved one, and getting your way to the detriment of the partner makes the partner wonder about the value of your kind of love.
In making decisions that affect both partners, a significant portion of the time you will be acceding to your partner’s preferences, a significant portion of the time your partner will go along with your preferences, and the rest of the time the two of you will compromise and find another alternative that pleases both. When you let your partner have his/her preference, you will assume that he/she will let you have your preference just as often. You can feel good when your flexibility and your making his/her needs just as important as your own make your partner happy.
This principle is like taking turns and equal sharing—you each get the same amount of the pie (without haggling or cajoling). You cannot get more of something positive than your partner in the relationship without taking on the role of the superior one.
Compromising requires good communication, patience, and good will. Both parties must put the needs and feelings of the partner on an equal par with their own. These outcomes must be acceptable to both, or they will leave an unpleasant residue that will color the rest of the relationship.
Equality poses serious problems for a couple who are following the more traditional pattern of the man as the leader and as making all the important decisions, with the woman as homemaker, follower, and obeying the leader without much question, because while the old pattern simplifies decisions and may have been useful in harder or more dangerous times, today when as a society we have the wealth to have a more equal sharing of power in the relationship, most women resent being restricted for what seems now to be no good reason. (If the man were perfect as a partner—totally honest and responsible, always helpful at home, a great lover, and successful in breadwinning, etc.—then many women would put up with the old pattern, but this man would be a rare exception!)
17. It’s a good rule not to criticize a loved one (“criticize” meaning to talk negatively about and imply demeanment of the person or that the person “should” be different or do things differently). If you don’t like something, communicate it objectively, take ownership of your desire (instead of attributing it to morality, efficiency, parents, etc.), and seek greater understanding or compromise. Check before speaking whether you have any justification for your concern aside from the fact that you don’t like it. This is not an invitation to make up justifications that aren’t really why you are bringing the matter up but make it sound like no one in their right mind could take the position that the loved one is taking. If it’s just that you want it, say that (or delay speaking until you have thought it all through again).
In a complete, accepting, and equal relationship, we have the opportunity to realize that much of what we think of as “the way things are” and “the way things should be” is actually relatively arbitrary. Someone thought it up or attributed it to God, or it is the current group consensus, but that doesn’t make it right and doesn’t make it the only way to arrange things or solve a problem. Realizing this can be scary, since it means that the only basis for much of what you want is just that you want it that way, which exposes that your wishes are no more important than those of anyone else and means that you can’t with integrity use other “reasons” in trying to get your way.
18. An intimate rewarding relationship requires that neither partner controls the other partner. If you justify your control as being good for the partner, it is a smokescreen. It’s really to make you feel safer. No one with good self-esteem and confidence likes to be controlled. It is a challenge to let your partner be whoever he/she chooses to be and do whatever he/she chooses to do, because you might feel hurt or find out that he/she doesn’t “really” love you (and if that were true, then it wouldn’t be the relationship you want). In an intimate rewarding relationship, you are confident that you are lovable and can accept the fact that if you were to find out that your partner didn’t love you in the way that you want, you would be OK and would be better off trying another partner (instead of blaming the current partner or suffering the agony of trying to figure out what is wrong with you that the partner doesn’t love you like you want).
19. Just as controlling an intimate partner destroys that intimacy, having appropriate humility helps intimacy. Appropriate humility is knowing what is your fault (without any avoiding) and what is someone else’s fault, knowing what you know and what you don’t know, accepting that you can never know everything about your partner, and acknowledging that you don’t (can’t) know what is best for your partner.
20. Several of the preceding items point out how crucial trust is to having the best intimate rewarding relationship. You can’t know in advance how much you can trust a partner. You only find out by taking the risk of letting him/her know you fully, plus finding out whether he/she will shape his/her behavior to be sure that you are not harmed by it. You only know this through experience, but it is truly wonderful when you can trust your partner fully. Of course, you will have to be as trustworthy as your partner, if you are to gain complete trust in the relationship. Are you willing to control you own behavior so that your partner is never (or rarely) hurt?
In order to be close to others, they must trust us, and in order to have trust, we must give up trying to take advantage of them and live our relationships with complete equality and fairness. We must also give up trying to force others to do what we want (which arouses resentment and which is clearly the opposite of treating others with respect and as equals!).
If this degree of trust sounds too good to be even possible, it’s true that it is rare. It’s much more likely that your relationship is rewarding even though every once in a while, you do feel hurt by something he/she does and every once in a while, your partner feels hurt by you. This calls for reconciliation and forgiveness to repair the separation caused (see “forgiveness” below).
Of course, in reality none of us is completely trustworthy. Given that we are human beings, we make mistakes no matter how hard we try not to, so in this sense, no one is completely trustworthy. “Complete trust,” therefore, is being completely open to the other person and trusting him/her not to hurt you too much, while you trust yourself to be able to manage the hurt when it comes and are able to continue enjoying the relationship even after being hurt.
Complete trust is made even more difficult by the fact that even the best of relationships can change over time. Once you have a wonderful relationship, you can’t control keeping it just as it is, so you have to make your peace with the fact that you could lose it. Again, this challenges us to be confident enough of our lovability and our ability to love again that we could get over the loss.
21. Good communication is crucial for having a rewarding intimate relationship, both because it avoids many misunderstandings and because it is how you tell each other about yourselves. True intimacy involves knowing your partner intimately—probably more intimately than you know anyone else. Practice good communication by stating things clearly and completely (so there’s no chance of manipulation), by considering before you say something how you think your partner will hear it, by listening completely (so that you interpret what is said accurately), and by owning your part in feedback you get about yourself and in any discussion of differences and goals. All of you must be available to your partner.
In the closest relationships, the partners can (though not necessarily always do) share almost everything in their thoughts, needs, and feelings with each other. This means a degree of vulnerability that we don’t usually permit in our relationships, and this vulnerability requires a high degree of trust on the part of each partner.
In the closest of relationships, conversation can be a means of being most truly yourself and of most thoroughly accepting and appreciating your partner. This can start with mundane sharing, but if both parties are looking at the deeper meanings and implications of what is said, then immediate closeness in an almost sacred space can develop. This interchange has its own pace and includes silences as each allows new information to reach far into his/her memories and unconscious to produce new speculations, questions, and insights.
Topics touched on include everything but most especially the emotional experience of each person in all aspects of living—success, failure, change, acceptance of imperfection, vulnerability, unfulfilled hopes and desires, closeness, existence, aging, and death, threat, and vulnerability. This sharing takes time, though the surround can vary (a hot tub, a sauna, a walk, being together in bed, watching the sky at night, watching the clouds in daytime), but it must be free of distractions and things that will pull us out of this closeness (other people, work, phone, computer, TV, multitasking). In an already well-established intimate relationship, productive communications can happen through our electronic screens, but in a new relationship, these screens are not sufficient to convey all of the non-verbal information needed to establish trust and make the relationship closer.
Appreciating relationships fully is enhanced by being attuned to our intuition, since the ineffable is often expressible only in images and metaphor. Take time and make opportunity to share about each other in surroundings conducive to in-depth sharing. If you are really interested and grown-up enough to handle it, there is no reason to ever run out of dinner conversation!
22. In a truly close and loving relationship, honesty and being totally open to your partner are especially important. Keeping secrets always creates distance, both now (because you know you are holding a secret) and later (when your partner finds out about your secret). This is true even when to know the secret would be quite painful for the partner. Deception inevitably diminishes trust and breeds distrust, whether that is about your spending, your resentments, your mistakes, your sexual desires, or an affair. Truthful relations require that both parties be able to handle their emotions with regard to incoming information maturely enough that most information does not lead to serious problems in the relationship. The more sensitive a person is to perceived insult and criticism, the more difficult it is for him/her to tolerate a wide range of communication.
23. In order to gain trust and to have deep love and closeness, you must be unfailingly responsible for your own feelings and behavior. Keep your promises, and do what you say you will do every time, even if you’d rather slide or slack off, even if it costs you something to be responsible. Loving someone else does not give you any right to fudge the truth, slack on your responsibilities, or make more work or trouble for your partner. You are in charge of yourself, and it is up to you to manage yourself so that you are a good partner and don’t knowingly hurt your partner. You can’t depend on your partner to control your feelings or behavior, because then the relationship would not be equal and the trust possible would be much less. It is tempting to blame your partner in order to justify your hurtful feelings or behavior, but this just causes more separation. It is up to you to manage yourself.
24. For the most intimate and rewarding relationship, each partner should do whatever is truly best for himself/herself. This does not mean doing what you feel like doing but doing what will make the best life overall for you going forward. In most instances, taking others’ needs and feelings into account (as well as your own) will lead to what is truly best for you. In order to apply this principle, take enough time before making your choices of behaviors that you can fully consider what will truly be in your best interest. If one of you cannot live comfortably with the other doing what is in fact truly in his/her best interest (including taking the partner’s best interests into account). (Again, for more explanation of this principle, see my book Live Wisely, Deeply, and Compassionately.)
25. Having an intimate rewarding relationship requires both partners to have good self-esteem. Self-esteem is built and maintained by treating yourself well, doing what is truly best for you, and ensuring that others treat you reasonably well. Every time you do something gratifying for yourself (getting yourself a glass of water, taking yourself to a movie, saying “no” to a request that could result in harm to you), you make your feelings about yourself (your self-esteem) just a little bit more positive.
Both partners must have the self-esteem to know that they are capable and lovable. Both must be independent enough to take care of themselves. An intimate rewarding relationship is grace—a benefit from two people being able and willing to know each other (and themselves) fully, to risk everything in being open, and at the same time to know that he/she could have a fine life by themselves without such a partner.
These are the essential attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors needed for good self-esteem.
- thinking independently
- believing that you have fundamental worth and value just for being who you are
- believing that you are not inferior
- believing that you did not deserve bad treatment that you received
- believing that you have the right to exist and to be yourself
- respecting yourself at all times and treating yourself in a respectful manner
- accepting yourself completely (letting yourself be)
- loving yourself and treating yourself in a loving way
- altering your standards and expectations of yourself so that they are humane and reasonable
- doing what is truly best for yourself
- treating yourself well
- ensuring that you are treated well by others
26. Even in a wonderful relationship, there will be occasions where you feel hurt or where you hurt your partner. This calls for forgiveness so that the relationship can continue to be wonderful. Forgiveness does not wipe away a hurt or pretend that it never happened, but it should enable you to move forward with the relationship with a positive attitude. You cannot change the past, but you can change your interpretation of the past. If you feel hurt, even though you fear the outcome, it is better to disclose your hurt and see what can be done about it than it is to hide your hurt and be tormented with why the hurtful thing happened and whether it presages the end of the relationship.
Explain the hurt to your partner and inquire about his/her view of what happened. Accept your part in the matter, if you were not aware of it. You can then work toward changing your interpretation of such events in the future and/or beefing up your self-esteem so that you are not so hurt in the future. Discuss the matter with your partner in a non-threatening, non-defensive manner, so that you can have an accurate and complete understanding of what happened. Do your best to arrive at a mutual understanding of the matter that you can work from together. Figure out whether the hurt is likely to happen again and whether it can be prevented. Discuss how to prevent it, taking full responsibility for your behavior, too. Figure out how to protect yourself from the hurt if it is likely to happen again, and accept the risk involved (and your vulnerability). Finally, decide whether and how this will affect your relationship, and decide how you will proceed.
It is not necessarily important that you say “I forgive you” or that your partner say “I forgive you,” because that does not change what happened. It is much more important that you figure out where to go from here, together. You must each take responsibility for taking care of yourselves in the future.
Part of moving on may well be forgiving yourself when you cause hurt to your partner (or to yourself). It is typical for us to feel guilt or shame when we do something contrary to our own standards, harm ourselves or others, or reject ourselves. Guilt (a combination of fear, anticipation of punishment, and painful self-criticism) is a primary barrier to self-acceptance, and in order to restore inner peace and accept ourselves fully once again, it is important to forgive ourselves. In forgiving ourselves, we see clearly what we have done, we right wrongs that can be righted, we improve our behavior for the future so that we will not harm ourselves or others in the same way again, and then we let go of guilt and self-hatred and move forward into the future with a positive, though realistic attitude. Here are some steps that will help you in seeking forgiveness—from yourself or from others—so that you can accept yourself once again.
In dealing with guilt–
(a) Acknowledge fully and honestly what you have done, with no excuses, rationalizations, or attempts to shift the blame inappropriately to others. (Of course, you should not take responsibility for things that you have not done!)
(b) Determine how your behavior has affected both yourself and others. If no one has been harmed, then reconsider why you consider what you have done to be “wrong.” (Even if no one was harmed, the behavior may still be dangerous enough and potentially harmful enough that you still think it best not to do it.) If others act hurt, but this is because of their own inappropriate reactions to your behavior, then you must draw the line regarding what you will be responsible for. If you decide that your behavior was not wrong, then you can accept it and consider whether you need to forgive yourself for your self-criticism and self-rejection regarding this behavior.
(c) Consciously accept what you did as part of your history now. Don’t pretend that it didn’t happen, or that it really wasn’t you, or that you can wipe out your action by making up for it after the fact. You really did what you did, and nothing will change that.
(d) Understand why you did what you did. What needs, motives, weaknesses, and blind spots were involved? Be totally honest with yourself. This is where you are likely to see how you hurt yourself sometimes with your choices.
(e) Consider whether the standard you applied to yourself was appropriate, and consider whether you have been too hard on yourself.
(f) If you believe that your standard is appropriate, and you still feel uncomfortable with your behavior, then you must next decide whether you want to change your behavior. Carefully decide if it would really be better for you if you did not do that behavior again. This is a crucial step, for if you really think, consciously or unconsciously, that it is better for you to keep doing the behavior, then you will keep on doing it (and keep on violating the standards that you say you believe in), even if it results in guilt over and over again.
(g) If you decide not to do the behavior again, resolve to take better care of yourself in the future by not repeating the behavior in question (because you believe that it is truly best for you not to engage in the behavior again), and commit yourself to this path.
(h) Decide whether you need to change some of your habits and ways of controlling your behavior in order to be able to avoid this particular behavior in the future.
(i) Consider taking actions to make up for what you have done, like apologizing or making something up to another person (or to yourself, if you were the one harmed). Sometimes due to the passage of time or others’ attitudes and feelings, you cannot make up for harm caused to others.
(j) You have now done all you can do to take care of what you have done and to avoid doing such things in the future. The last step is to accept the above actions as adequate grounds for letting go of that past behavior, letting go of any guilt that you feel, receiving the forgiveness of the other person if that is offered, and forgiving yourself— which means accepting yourself as OK again.
If you have trouble forgiving yourself or finding forgiveness from others, identify the conditions that you require in order to be forgiven. Do you have some unrealistic requirements that are not likely to be met, such as requiring that you repay the injured party double value before you can forgive yourself, or requiring that the person injured tell you that you are OK? Remember that forgiving is not forgetting. Also, you may need to accept that sometimes the injured party simply refuses to forgive. Sometimes forgiving yourself is all you can do.
You can forgive yourself for harming yourself accidentally if you sincerely intend not to continue harming yourself, but if you are fooling yourself when you promise yourself not to repeat the self-harming behavior, eventually this will become an issue of bad faith with yourself. You will be unable to fool yourself any longer and unable to accept yourself.
Once again, in forgiving ourselves, we see clearly what we have done, we right wrongs that can be righted, we improve our behavior for the future so that we will not harm ourselves or others in the same way again, and then we let go of guilt and self-hatred and move forward into the future with a positive, though realistic attitude.
27. When there is a rift in a relationship, some sort of “making up” is imperative. Don’t try to do this by getting the other person to admit that he/she was wrong. Equality and fairness require that you “own” your part in the rift (even if for one of you that is just for over-reacting) and that you both indicate a desire not to contribute again to a rift. Sometimes a gift, like flowers or chocolates, can help symbolically, but you should not attempt to do this (or the infamous “make-up sex”) as the sole method of dealing with the problem, because it leaves the main issue hanging. You must both acknowledge your part in things and say what you will do to avoid that in the future.
It is tempting to feel that you had no part in what happened and that it was all your partner’s fault, and perhaps that could theoretically be possible in a few cases, but usually if you are the offended partner, and you are honest with yourself and willing to be imperfect, you can see your contribution. In most instances of affairs, for instance, the offended partner can see something that he/she did that probably contributed (pulled away from, ignored, or insulted the offending partner before the affair occurred; tried to stimulate jealousy in the partner; did something that violated the rules that the couple had for the relationship without resolving the feelings created; etc.).
28. We crave love and closeness in our primary relationships, yet this puts considerable pressure on each partner to handle emotions and emotional difficulties well, something that we are not trained to do (though some of us have been lucky enough to learn some useful things in this regard by being around our parents, and some of us have learned some things through experience and suffering).
You will greatly enhance your closeness by paying attention at all times to your partner’s emotional status and then offering recognition and support for those feelings (if that is needed). In true intimacy, both partners are comfortable with the other person knowing what both of them are feeling, and they both trust that the partner will provide recognition and support if needed.
The more you depend on your partner to manage your emotions (to make you happy and to mitigate your emotional pain), the less joyous love and the less ease you will have in the relationship. Your daily need for this assistance (beyond an occasional, short-term need, which is normal) will probably become a burden for your partner, who may come to resent your neediness or weakness. We are drawn to every relationship by what we hope to get from it, and emotional support is something we all need from time to time from our loved ones, but too much dependence makes the relationship unequal. Work toward being able to keep your emotional equilibrium yourself, so that your occasional need for support can be an opportunity for greater bonding through the honest expression of vulnerability and pain. Ensure that you seek intellectual and emotional enrichment from a number of sources (not just from your partner), so that you can bring enrichment to your partner as well as getting it from him/her.
The basics of emotion management are–
a. Be aware of all of your emotions (and aware of your partner’s as well).
b. Accept all of your emotions (and do not identify any of them as “bad”).
c. Take responsibility for your emotions, being clear that your emotions arise from within yourself and are not placed into you from outside.
d. Do not take responsibility for others’ emotions (unless you have deliberately attempted to cause them). Do not blame others for your emotions, unless they have purposely tried to cause them.
e. Accept that emotional pain is inevitable and often useful and does not necessarily need to be avoided or altered. When nothing can be done to alleviate or avoid a painful emotion, tolerate it with good grace.
f. Do not distort reality or use other ultimately maladaptive defenses/avoidances in order to ease emotional pain (except in crisis overload situations). (Be convinced that you will be better off dealing with emotional pain than you will be if you employ distortions.)
g. Experience the emotion fully (or at least fully enough to gain all of the useful information in the emotion).
h. Let your emotions be, without needing to act on them except
by choice. Delay acting in response to them until it is adaptive to act.
i. Interpret and use the information in the emotion appropriately (realizing that your emotions may not be based on reality).
j. Learn what you can about yourself from the emotion and from what stimulated it.
k. Correct emotion-based misperceptions or misinterpretations so that your interpretations of reality can be more accurate in the future. After becoming clear about the reasons for the emotion, if the emotion is incongruent with how you want to respond to the situation or issue, then identify the beliefs, understanding, and/or conditioning that cause the undesired emotion in you or your undesired reaction to the emotion, and
change those beliefs or understandings, or re-process those conditioning
experiences in such a way that the emotional reaction that you desire becomes possible and appropriate to your beliefs and understanding of reality. (For example, if you “take everything personally” by interpreting every action of your partner as meaning
something about his/her feelings for you, establish a habit that whenever you feel that fear or hurt, you pause and think about whether your partner’s action might have nothing to do with you and whether you are over-reacting. Reflect on your ability to let your partner “be himself/herself” fully.)
l. Express emotions adaptively when this is needed to resolve them and complete their work.
m. Share and discuss emotions with others, if that helps you to “process” them (through feeling understood, feeling accepted, gaining new insights and perspectives, etc.).
n. “Process” persistent emotions until they fade (often through acceptance and forgiveness of self and/or others, or through accommodation or habituation).
o. Understand and transcend your use of displacement (e.g., reacting with anger instead of feeling the hurt that stimulated a reaction in the first place, like kicking the dog when you get home rather than cursing at your boss at work) Understand and transcend your use of “cover” emotions –skipping over an emotion you don’t like to feel so that you can feel one that you are more comfortable with (e.g., being angry at someone instead of feeling and expressing the hurt that is the true cause of the anger). Dealing with the displacement or the skipped-over emotion will give you the possibility of improvement in dealing with it.
p. Provide various forms of self-support, including soothing and comforting yourself for your emotional pain.
q. Cultivate self-esteem, reality skills, and interpersonal skills and ways of living that do not lead to unnecessary problematic emotions.
To summarize, first allow your emotions to be; they will fade with time. You may feel as if the crying you have held back for years will never stop, but it will. Be patient. Strive to understand what stimulates your emotions and then what they mean for you. Gain the information about yourself and the environment that the emotions convey. Then, do what you can to tolerate the emotion (or to reduce the emotion if it is interfering with your life). Be patient until the emotion fades. Finally, if certain emotions are difficult to tolerate, develop practical, social, and/or self-management skills to diminish the interference of the emotions in your life. (To see more detail about these principles, see the section on emotions in my book Live Wisely, Deeply, and Compassionately.)
29. Everything changes, including your rewarding intimate relationships. Your partner will continue to change and (hopefully) grow over the years, as you will, too (which gives us ongoing opportunity to know him/her (and yourself) even more fully). People change over time, both physically and mentally. Your partner could become unable to walk or unable to travel or could have so much chronic pain that the relationship was not as rewarding for you as it once was. These same things could happen to you. Partners can continue to mature but at different rates, so that you could become dissatisfied that he/she is not keeping up.
While it can be disconcerting to realize that no one is fixed in time and that the relationship you enjoy is destined to change, these awarenesses give us an opportunity to find what is valuable in everything, even things that we don’t fully understand or appreciate about the partner. The maturity in knowing and accepting that we don’t know everything about our partner may lead to a more melancholy but better balanced feel about life, which is not negative but accepts our human limitations and keeps us aware that nothing is perfect and nothing is forever. All of us will die someday, and this includes your partner. We don’t want to fully acknowledge that we may lose the relationship some day, but it is part of maturity to know this, and it can be a spur to help us appreciate each day together and to make the most of our time!
As a reminder, these are the topics covered here about relationships.
Love
Soulmates
Selecting partners
Attraction
Caring
Appreciation
Respect and courtesy
Understanding
Comfortableness
Changing the partner
Safety
Partner’s habits
Being yourself/letting partner be himself/herself
Compromise
Acceptance
Equality
Traditional gender roles
Criticism
Control
Humility
Trust
Communication
Honesty
Responsibility
Doing what is truly best for yourself
Self-esteem
Hurt/forgiveness (guilt)
Emotions
Change
To repeat some important information–As you read this, since you are truly and fully human, you are likely to have felt embarrassed at some of your attitudes and behaviors that act against having a rewarding and intimate relationship for both partners. This is normal. None of us are without our difficulties in relationships. Accept yourself, and take heart in your willingness to learn and grow. Also, the description of a rewarding intimate relationship offered here may very well sound so excellent that it is impossible for normal people to achieve, but any improvement you can make in yourself or your relationship will make it better than it is now. Don’t criticize yourself for not being the perfect partner—just be the best partner that you can be!
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